November 07, 2008

Item for the Obama Administration

Fix FEMA please.

Thousands Of FEMA Trailers Sit Vacant

Tens of thousands of government-owned trailers are sitting empty and unused while many in our area need to a place to live because of the destruction caused by Hurricane Ike.

Billions of your tax dollars were used to buy these trailers. Yet, FEMA has denied requests to send the trailers to southeast Texas.

The storage yard in Purvis is not the only one. FEMA currently has 120,000 travel trailers sitting vacant and unused at 21 storage sites around the United States.

Hundreds of Gulf Coast residents who lived in the trailers following Katrina and Rita have filed lawsuits against FEMA. The lawsuits claim high levels of the preservative formaldehyde caused them to become sick.

The lawsuits and health concerns prompted FEMA to stop using the travel-trailers. That decision is costing taxpayers millions of dollars in storage fees. FEMA reports it spends roughly $115 million a year to store the unused trailers.

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